Coal Mine in Llanddarog Carmarthen
is a sketch that appears in "Royal Episode 13," the twenty-sixth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Synopsis The sketch opens with a stock photo of the Welsh countryside with a caption "A Coal Mine in Llanddarog Carmarthen" superimposed over the photo. A voice-over (John Cleese) describes the hard, tough life of the coal miner and details the threats they face on a daily basis: roof-falls, floods, English criminal law, carbon monoxide and the threat of pneumoconiosis (which, he adds, "is...a disease miners get"). The scene changes to the interior of the mine where two miners (Graham Chapman and Terry Jones) are having a heated argument. As they hurl insults at each other, they begin to exchange blows, prompting their foreman (Eric Idle) to enter and break them up by threatening to put his pick through their heads. He demands to know what the argument is about, and after a beat, they reveal they are arguing over the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. The first miner (Chapman) believes it was ratified in 1713, while the second miner (Jones) is adamant that he is wrong, and that it was ratified in February, 1714. The foreman sides with the first miner and agrees that it was ratified in September, 1713, as everyone in the mine knows. A third miner (Michael Palin) enters and mockingly suggests the second miner was thinking of the Treaty of Westphalia. The second miner, now enraged, calls out the third, "Are you saying I don't know the difference between the War for bloody Spanish Succession and the Thirty bloody Years War?!" The third miner retorts "You wouldn't know the difference between the battle of Borodino and a tiger's bum!" This sets all three over the edge and a fight ensues until the foreman screams to break the fight up and hits one of them on the helmet with his pickaxe. He rants that he is sick of the constant fighting among the miners over trivial intellectual tidbits like the binomial theorem. Just then, two more miners enter with one (Ian Davidson) explaining that the other miner, Morgan (Terry Gilliam) has claimed that the abacus is found between the triglyphs in the frieze section of Greek Doric entablatures, which has started an argument among the other miners that he hopes the foreman can settle. The foreman chastises Morgan for confusing the abacus with the Metope. Enraged at being corrected, Morgan rushes the foreman and another fight ensues before an elegantly dressed management man (John Cleese) suddenly arrives in a sedan chair (with the words "frighteningly important" on the side) carried by two flunkies. As he steps out, the miners stop fighting and genuflect before him, removing their helmets. They pay tribute to him, "...whose nose we are not worthy to pick, and whose very feces are an untrammeled delight..." and beseech him to settle the argument about what lies between the triglyphs in the frieze section of a classical Greek Doric entablature. He apologetically says he has no idea and the miners disperse and clear out of the mine. A newsreader (Michael Palin) reveals in the next scene that the miners have gone on strike, refusing to work until the management tell them what a Metope is. He also reports on another strike in Dagenham where the workers at Fords have increased their demands to "thirteen reasons why Henry III was a bad king". Next, he reports that England has defeated Spain in the Disgusting Objects International at Wembley by a plate of braised pus to a putrid heron. The Newsreader then introduces the next program, "The Toad Elevating Moment" (which was proposed as a name for the show itself before "Monty Python" was first coined). Category:Royal Episode 13 sketches Category:Sketches